Tuesday, December 4, 2012

How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran

How to Be a
Woman

by Caitlin
Moran

According
to some corners of the lady-blogosphere, I'm supposed to be annoyed
with Caitlin Moran for not being the "right" kind of
feminist. As though our desiring equality is also supposed to be
synonymous with with uniformity. Not long ago, Moran was asked,
through Twitter, if she, during her interview with Lena Dunham had
asked about "the
complete and utter lack of people of colour in [G]irls."

Moran,
though she later said in this Salon interview that she should have been less "brusque," replied
to the tweet, "Nope. I literally couldn't give a shit about it."

I
broke my own first rule: Be Polite. But I was frankly offended that
this woman thought me and Lena Dunham were somehow conspiring in some
undefined racist plot, simply by telling our stories about slightly
overweight spotty girls just trying to get on in the world, and tell
a few jokes about our thighs. I’m not going to wank on about the
ethnic mix of my friends and, indeed, family, but I found that first
tweet presumptuous, rude, and about the worst thing you could accuse
anyone of. I’m bemused by the notion that there should be rules in
story-telling that mean you should have to tell everyone’s
story,
all
the
time. Clearly that’s not the case. No one’s ever done it, and no
one ever will. I wrote ‘How to Be A
Woman,’
not ‘How to Be ALL
Women.’
I would never presume to speak for 3.3 billion women. There is no
‘one voice of feminism.’ There is no ‘one voice’ of anything.

Yes,
How
to Be a Woman
is promoted as a type of feminist manifesto, but it's really more of
a memoir. Moran talks about her experience of growing up in
Wolverhampton, England during the 1980s and early '90s, home-schooled
and a bit overweight, crammed into her house with her parents and
eventually seven siblings. She wants to talk about how she
came into feminism, a feminism outside the the Women's Studies World.

Again
and again over the last few years, I turned to modern feminism to
answer questions that I had, but found that what had once been the one of most exciting, incendiary, and effective revolutions of all time had
somehow shrunk down into a couple of increasingly small arguments,
carried out among a couple of dozen feminist academics, in books that
only feminist academics would read, and discussed at 11 P.M. on BBC4.
Here's my beef with this:

Feminism
is too important to be discussed only by academics. And more
pertinently:

I'm
not a feminist academic, but, by God, feminism is so serious,
momentous and urgent that now is really the time for it to be
championed by a lighthearted broadsheet columnist and part-time TV
critic with appalling spelling. If something is thrilling and fun, I
want to join in — not watch from the sidelines. I have stuff to
say! Camille Paglia has Lady Gaga ALL WRONG! The feminist
organization Object is nuts
when it comes to pornography! Germaine Greer, my heroine, is
crackers
on the subject of transgender issues. And no
one
is tackling OK!
Magazine,
£600
handbags, Brazilians, stupid bachelorette parties, or Katie Price.

And
they have to be tackled. They have to be tackled, rugby-style, face
down in the mud, with lots of shouting.

Moran's
feminism is a populist feminism that concerns itself with the
everyday shit women have to endure. She's not saying
that bigger issues like pay inequity and abortion are unimportant,
nor is she saying that no one should be an academic, but rather that
women need to decide how they feel about the things they encounter in
their own lives. If you are
an academic, a politician or activist, those bigger issues could very
well be your everyday fight. But me, for example? My battles remain
more in the realm of how can I
feel good about what I'm doing, especially while raising my children.
How can I direct my kids into being more compassionate, unprejudiced
humans?

This
isn't just a "We need to teach our daughters to be strong"
matter — it's also about teaching our sons not to be the assholes
who came before. And perhaps more importantly, I'm hoping that they
will not fear or hate anyone who is different than they are. They
will be imperfect, as we all are, and sometimes they will be
contradictory in their worldview. No one is immune to this, but I
figure it is better to make the effort, however incrementally, to
improve. We don't have to be one with the universe, but if we
dislike, say, waxing our tender bits, then we should feel free to
ignore whatever pressure we feel to do so.

Yet,
when we meet a lady who does wax, who genuine feels better by doing so,
or maybe she just isn't over that particular insecurity hurdle? Well,
she's not instantly "anti-feminist" for doing so.

So,
no, Caitlin Moran isn't flawless, and she isn't pretending to be
either. She's the first one to admit that it's actually her husband
who is a "better" feminist than she is. On a small scale,
despite saying we need "lots of shouting," on the very next
page she says that we don't need shouting to fight "patriarchal
bullshit," but we need to laugh at it instead. Does this make
her inconsistent? Maybe, but I don't view it as a fireable offense.
There are days to be mad, and days to laugh while saying, "Are
you for real with this ridiculousness?"

Besides,
Moran is someone for whom humor comes easily — of course she'd
rather make jokes. Making jokes does not inherently mean she does not
take the subject seriously.

That's
not to say I'm with her on every point. For instance, her stance on
strip clubs seems a bit short-sighted. She says they "let
everyone down," and that at them, "no one's having fun."

Now,
it is true that a large percentage of strip clubs do not treat their
dancers right, and that there are customers who do not treat them
right, but I doubt that is 100% the case (as, again, there's no "one
way" of anything).

But
what are strip clubs and lap-dancing clubs if not "light
entertainment" versions of the entire history of misogyny?

Any
argument in their favor is fallacious. Recently, it has behooved
modish magazines to print interviews with young women who explain
that their career as strippers is paying their way through
university. This is thought to pretty much end any objections against
strip clubs on the basis that — look! — clever
girls
are doing it, in order to become middle-class professionals with
degrees! Ipso facto Girl Power!

[…]

If
women are having to strip to get an education — in a way that male
teenagers are really notably not — then that's a gigantic political
issue, not a reason to keep strip clubs going.

She's
right in that it is
a political issue that we do not have the same culture that would
allow women to openly express pleasure at seeing a naked male form,
in the same way that men have the opportunity to do so, but it is not
a reason to get rid of strip clubs. The underlying misogynistic
culture at some strip clubs should be changed, yes, but "change"
does not mean the absence of dancing women. There are problems to be
dealt with, but condemning (what I see as) a public form of sexuality
isn't the answer.

A
couple of pages later, Moran says:

Just
as pornography isn't inherently wrong — it's just some fucking —
so pole-dancing, or lap-dancing or stripping, isn't inherently wrong
— it's just some dancing. So long as women are doing it for fun —
because they want to and they are in a place where they won't be
misunderstood, and because it seems ridiculous and amusing […]

Right.
Because the other ways in which people make a living are all for fun,
and there's never
any misunderstandings about who those workers are as people. Yep. Oh,
and are you saying that pornography doesn't have the same
misogynistic problems in some
venues?

No,
she's not saying that pornography is an exploitation-free zone, but
if she's generally okay with porn, I guess I don't see why she should
be so hostile towards the existence of strip clubs. Also, as far as the
generalization that "gay men wouldn't be seen dead" in your
average strip club, but will support burlesque shows instead —
Well, for one thing, your average strip club is mainly about
getting aroused by women, an activity I'd venture that most
gay men aren't so interested in. It's fine if you prefer the artistry
behind a burlesque production, but that doesn't mean everyone
has to prefer it.

Work
to change the problems within the venue, but don't burn the place
down and salt the earth.

There
are other contradictory viewpoints that Moran holds, but you know
what? I still really enjoyed this book. The stories that are specific
to her life, particularly her relationship with her sister Caz, are
great and often hilarious. I wholeheartedly respect that Moran
remains unapologetic in her writing, and I think that just because
How
to Be a Woman
exists does not mean she won't one day change her mind or better
articulate her thoughts on certain subjects. As we all do.

Some
cranky writers have dismissed her work as "Feminism 101,"
to which I'd ask, "Oh, you never had to take a 101 class? My,
look at you! Sprung into this world so fully-formed and serious!"